Anyone who has a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease knows the heartbreak and frustration of caring for Mom or Grandpa. Now nursing homes with Alzheimer's patients are trying novel approaches that add a heavy dose of TLC to the equation. This Newport News Daily Press story profiles one Virginia facility that encourages patients to cook, iron or perform other household tasks if they so choose. "What we're really trying to do is create home," Barbara Dearmon, Riverside Health System's memory support adviser, says in the story.

Sometime in the fall of 1986, Joyce Beauchene began thinking about the interstate highway that slices through the family farm in South Dakota. I'm going out on that interstate, she would tell her husband, Cecil. I'm going to step in front of a big truck. She talked of a terrible pain in her head. Like someone was in there with a hot iron, Cecil recalls. Month after month, Cecil Beauchene watched Alzheimer's disease corrode his wife's mind--while doctors assured him there was nothing he could do.

Most of a Beverly Hills woman's $20-million estate--contested by her husband, who was cut out of her will just two days before her suicide--will go to a Jewish anti-drug program in Los Angeles and two other charities under a settlement reached Wednesday. Attorneys for the husband, wealthy real estate developer William Weinberg, 59, agreed to the settlement despite the fact that he and their two teen-age children, Marc, 18, and Elizabeth, 17, get no money.

Don't sugarcoat this. It ain't easy for any of us. --Samuel Kaplan Mollie Kaplan can remember half a century ago when she was 12 and met her husband, Samuel, at a Halloween party in the Bronx. She can remember elementary school penmanship classes, when she changed her name from the Molly on her birth certificate to Mollie because she had a bad habit of writing the "y" below the line. What she can't remember is whether she had breakfast, so sometimes she eats it twice.

They were two little old ladies living together. One sister was 86, the other 84. Now one is dead. Police said Sunday that Edna Lamont, a piano teacher and widow with two children, is suspected of bludgeoning her older sister, Mary McBride, to death. No charges have been filed, pending the results of an autopsy, said Los Angeles Police Cmdr. William Booth. No motive is known. Lamont told police that she found the bleeding body of her sister on the floor about 5 a.m. Saturday, according to Booth.

Memory problems in rats caused by chronic alcohol intake can be mostly reversed with brain tissue transplants, and such therapy may someday help alcoholics and victims of Alzheimer's disease, a researcher said. "I think that really means there's hope, if you blow your mind with too much whiskey, maybe we'll be able to repair it with transplants," or similarly ease mental deficits in Alzheimer's, said Jeffrey Gray of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.

The Los Angeles County Elder Abuse Hotline, (800) 992-1660, operates 24 hours a day and accepts calls regarding elder abuse from victims, concerned citizens and potential or actual abusers. Calls can be made anonymously and are referred to local Adult Protective Services offices. For information or referral, Los Angeles County's Area Agency on Aging can be reached at (213) 857-6466, Los Angeles City's Area Agency on Aging at (213) 485-4402.

Searchers found a 78-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease early Monday--more than a day after she wandered away from her daughter's house in Lennox, authorities said. Mable Greenwood was apparently in good physical condition when police found her near Slauson and Denker avenues about 1:30 a.m. Monday. Officers were called to the area by someone who had seen a photograph of Greenwood on a television newscast Sunday night.

A UC Irvine professor known for his research into Alzheimer's disease has received a $250,000 grant and award from Metropolitan Life Foundation of New York. Carl Cotman, a professor of psychobiology at UCI, will receive $200,000 to support his research into the debilitating and fatal disease and $50,000 as a prize. Cotman, a pioneer in research of brain chemistry, has developed approaches to Alzheimer's disease that may be applicable to other brain disorders.

Tustin police Saturday were searching for an 80-year-old Alzheimer's disease patient who wandered away from a mobile home park where he lives with his wife. Police said Burton Burks stepped out of his home at the Saddleback Mobile Home Park at 1501 Williams St. about 6:30 p.m. Saturday. Burks is described as thin, gray-haired and balding. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a dark blue sweater vest and brown pants. Police describe Burks as confused and disoriented.